Unexpected scenario of glass transition in polymer globules: an exactly enumerable model

TL;DR

This paper presents an exactly enumerable lattice model for glass transition in polymer globules, revealing a novel ergodicity breaking scenario with phase space resembling a fractal foam, highlighting the role of phase space geometry.

Contribution

It introduces a new lattice model that demonstrates a unique ergodicity breaking scenario with exponentially increasing small chambers, emphasizing phase space topology in glass formation.

Findings

Phase space consists of exponentially many small chambers.

Chamber sizes follow a power law distribution.

Model demonstrates a novel glass transition scenario.

Abstract

We introduce a lattice model of glass transition in polymer globules. This model exhibits a novel scenario of ergodicity breaking in which the disjoint regions of phase space do not arise uniformly, but as small chambers whose number increases exponentially with polymer density. Chamber sizes obey power law distribution, making phase space similar to a fractal foam. This clearly demonstrates the importance of the phase space geometry and topology in describing any glass-forming system, such as semicompact polymers during protein folding.